Trump supporters say terrorist attacks strengthen case for Mexico wall

Republican convention delegates in Cleveland interviewed by the
Guardian Monday mostly backed the plan as a means of stopping
illegal immigrants

David Smith in Cleveland
Monday 18 July 2016 20.47 BST

Donald Trump’s case for building a wall along the Mexican border has been strengthened by recent terrorist attacks in America, France and elsewhere, many of his supporters believe.

Republican convention delegates in Cleveland interviewed by the Guardian mostly backed the plan – a core rallying cry of the Trump campaign expected to be adopted as part of the official GOP platform on Monday – as a means of stopping illegal immigrants, though they were vague on details when asked how long the wall would take to build or what it would look like.

Lei Ann Gleaves, a political researcher from Franklin, Tennessee, said a similar proposal had been floated in the 1990s when she lived in California. “I was against in it in the 90s but, now I’m a mother of two kids, I’m for it because I’m worried about illegal children coming here without their shots, then they go to the schools. A principal or teacher in that situation might let them in.”

Gleaves’s own parents were immigrants from the Philippines where, she said, tuberculosis is a problem. “There could be diseases my children would not be able to tolerate. People say Donald Trump is racist; I don’t want my thoughts to be construed as that.”

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